‘Not for the Nervous!’ was the
warning the first Scream! comic
carried on its cover. But the free gift of a set of plastic vampire teeth and
the fact that it was printed on IPC’s standard toilet roll quality paper made
it look a bit silly. Like so much of
that publisher’s output, it looked cheap, dowdy and even a little desperate. I didn’t read it during its short run and only
discovered it a few years later when a stack of unsold copies was being sold
half-price in a suitably dusty old newsagent’s.
By that time I had become a
regular reader of 2000AD so the
gothic humour of Scream! did appeal
though it lacked the frequently mind-bending quality of the Galaxy’s Greatest.
Despite its very short run (it was cancelled during a publisher’s strike after
its fifteenth issue) Scream!
attracted a band of hardcore devotees who helped the comic maintain an online
presence and re-published some of the stories. More recently, Rebellion’s
purchase of IPC’s stable of comic characters in 2015 led to the publication of
collected editions of Scream! strips Monster, The Dracula Files with The Thirteenth
Floor to receive the same treatment in 2018. It’s an impressive feat for a
weekly that only lasted for four months.
Scream!’s predecessor,
the Pat Mills-created girls’ comic Misty
(1978-1980) was an anthology of supernatural stories that also had an impact that
belied its relatively short lifespan.
And some of its best stories have been reproduced in collected form too,
beginning with last year’s pairing of Moonchild
with The Four Faces of Eve.
As well as republishing old stories,
Rebellion have been able to create new adventures for the old characters and
their first attempt has led to the Scream!
and Misty Special. But this is much
more than a nostalgia fest for those of us in the throes of a mid-life crisis…
What is particularly striking
about this comic is the way in which the re-booted stories, like all good
horror tales, reflect contemporary concerns. In the Special version of The
Thirteenth Floor, in which Max, the deranged computer who controls a tower
block, exacts punishment on wrongdoers by bringing them by lift to the
mind-shattering location of the title, there are echoes of the Grenfell
disaster when it is revealed that the building fell into ruin and was then
cheaply restored.
Unsavoury echoes of modern
Britain are also apparent in The
Sentinels, in which there are hints of the worst emissions released by the
Brexit debate. In a rundown area on the
outskirts of the city (urban decay is a running theme) a cranky older man
shouts racist abuse at a teenage boy wearing a turban. Overlooking the scene is an abandoned tower
block (again!) which functions as a portal into an alternative reality where
the same man is the totalitarian leader of a Britain that was defeated in World
War II.
But the original Scream! never took itself too seriously
and there is plenty of levity in these pages. Those old enough to remember IPC
characters from the early to mid-1970s will doubtless get a kick out of seeing
the revival of the tremendously eccentric Black
Max (a perma-grinning World War I pilot assisted by an army of bats!) and
the host of vintage characters who make up the supporting cast of Death Man, while the joint editorial
team of the putrescent Ghastly McNasty and the ethereal Misty makes for a
comical clash of styles.
What will perhaps be most
gratifying for older readers (and the vast majority of readers will be older)
is seeing these characters and stories at last in full colour, and on high
quality paper, and seeing once again the jagged Scream! logo jumping out from the newsstands. A worthy revival.
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